“We call on you … to take up your responsibility to Facebook users, and to speak in person to their elected representatives,” the five chairs write in a jointly-signed letter.

Zuckerberg now runs not a business but an empire. It’s time to strike back

Read more

With or without Zuckerberg, the joint committee will meet in London on 27 November, led by Damian Collins MP, the chair of Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee. The committee’s inquiry into fake news and disinformation has regularly called for Zuckerberg to appear, but been rebuffed each time.

On 2 November, following the joint request from the UK and Canada, Facebook again declined on Zuckerberg’s behalf, telling the two committee chairs, Collins and Canada’s Bob Zimmer, that it was “not possible for Mr Zuckerberg to be available to all parliaments”.

In the six months since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Zuckerberg has appeared just three times in front of legislatures: twice in the US Congress, and once in the European parliament.

In a statement, Collins said: “His response is not good enough for my committee nor for the parliamentarians from around the world who also consider that Mark Zuckerberg has questions to answer in person. That’s why we’re inviting him once more […] It’s a call that’s growing, not diminishing.

“Yesterday the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, told my committee that dealing directly with senior Facebook staff had been critical to the investigations [of her office]. In her view, it would be ‘very useful’ for Mark Zuckerberg to appear before the committee.

“Mark Zuckerberg has set himself the personal challenge of ‘fixing’ Facebook this year to prevent its misuse in our democratic process. By being unwilling to face questions about his progress, doubts about his ability to do so remain.”